WE PRESUME THE weightiest form to be that of earth—matrix of minerals which keeps secretly to itself while furnishing life to every dependent. So ring the highest bodies overhead where immaculate light collects and stars are roweled about, sending down virtue.
WELL, IF WE consider how we were bequeathed this universe we think its revolutions ought to be organized for our edification—spiral movements dispersed by that broad parabola of stars which nightly monitors our home and refuge. Now if Utopia be celestial, then Man’s spirit should prove next to God. And therefore, if Man’s wealth be laid apart in ephemeral or fading objects, we propose that the impoverished spirit must labor among lost and fading deities.
SINCE INITIALLY THE universe was propounded by God, by Him it is meant to be concluded. Divers examples could we cite of mechanical shape or design drawn from unorthodox craft, yet how could a man benefit by exchanging spiritual belief for the joy of weighing aether, for the fugitive pleasure of calculating a pendulum’s arc? What deposition has this? Should the years reverse their flight?
TO ALL THINGS God offers an appropriate term of existence whether for mischief or good, and the fleshy life of a man compared to the duration of his Creator is miserably quick because God will persist after flames incinerate the world. Man does not last long, his term is narrow, and throughout fitful years he feels oppressed by voices riding the wind, assailed by something that pities lesser beings.
ANXIOUS FOR CULMINATION, Man arrives turned with many sides and listens for the spinning murmur of creation at the hush of the seventh day. Like the curve of a plate that is tossed on a wheel, or like cast-gold ornaments made in tropic lands, or like a pool of smelted iron, so was his future determined by Providence which takes care neither to shift nor cancel.
WE PROPOSE THAT holiness was cast apart from the Church by God Himself, since to whom else should we attribute dignities, prebends, curacies, altars and rectorships being staked at dice, lost, won, or offered in exchange for mistresses, for gold? We see with what ease priories, abbeys, readerships and professorships may be purchased by the first wheelwright or chapman or peasant or thief to waggle his bulging purse underneath a bishop’s nose. Does not surpassing conceit adumbrate the midnight hour? Have not men dishonored reason to perpetuate unspeakable absurdities? Yet do we depart from the animal—obtaining no dispensation from the issue of our thought.
NOW THE HUMBLEST creatures obediently conform to instinct because this tends to the preservation of their existence, which they perceive to be their total happiness and welfare. But it is different with men who feel disposed to preserve whatever is mortal about them, yet feel a higher obligation. And it is to this that they owe their allegiance. Therefore Man rightly has been named Microcosm, formed upon the image of a Creator, and the abrégé of His work. And the universe was completed with Man’s formation because it was necessary that a universe be created in stupendous proportion before reducing it to nominal limits. Now as the cat inevitably is treacherous, the lion bold, the dog compliant, and the lamb gentle, so might we conjecture on the propensities of Man. But at this we are deceived since he is full of excess. And we hear prophecy of a dawn against which every contrivance fails. What do men do except light tapers, pray and copulate until the advent? Is not their reproduction the palmary act of dispassionate nature? What makes it a concern of mortals to become immortal and grasp at futures surmounting this? Philosophers that opine a scalding destruction of the world have not dreamt upon a reduction of mortalities into glass—which is vitrification.
CENTURIES TESTIFY TO the existence of an Immaculate Teacher by whom all nativities are constituted, yet are we engaged with dubious adventure, blind, troubled by a whistling among the senses, our days mortgaged, arguing externals that yield new burdens and perplexities in proportion as they increase. So we ask upon history’s course: might this be the register of fallacious dispute and mischance, of infamous sophistry? Does an instant arrive when fraud and perversion suffocate the soul? How should we exercise judgment against ourselves? Where is hermetic treasure manifest?
REFLECT HOW INFIRM faculties of the mind rally to desperate imposture, how the highest subserve the lowest, how deceit and hubris graduate from private into public circumstance, casting a furious heritage across civility. What engenders wisdom’s root? Who shall take the measure of wisdom’s leaf? Which among us has visited the antechamber of understanding?
SUPPOSE THE CRYPT of Christian Rosenkreutz should fly open, would reformation follow? And what of the Lord Poemander—where does He abide? What covenant approves our dissembling fall and transformation? Or the alchymist at his work-shop, how could he distil incomprehensible matter from its curse? Complexities, enigmas, all that is or is not—all provide their statement and we awaken disgruntled. Disappointments cloud the dawn. We search after the luxuries of intolerable flesh and transient comfort, swift things that cause grief. Ambiguous oracles stupefy us. We become fearful and twisted, persuading ourselves it is good to interpret or prophesy.
ZOROASTER, COUNSELED BY angels, renounced Heaven’s favorites that he might bequeath alchymic magistery through hieroglyphs, circumscribing the boundaries of rectitude. So did Heliodorus in Thessaly give up a bishopric at Triccia rather than accede to the verdict which condemned his meditations. And therefore we believe superiority must be that which rises out of critical intercourse. And we think Man was constituted from two bodies, one visible, one invisible, and we say the latter defines us.
WE ASSERT THAT conscience, being unable to err, cannot sin but acts in solitude, approving or disapproving, so it is incorruptible. Thus, if we remark of any man that his conscience was bad, we speak not of a faculty but of some subject, which conscience has disavowed. And should any
